Longer piece in the Guardian, splashed it quite prominently as an England hero retiring from internationals. It mentions the point I raise a few messages up that it's contingent on what contract is negotiated about how much we see of him - final few paragraphs of the piece:
Good news for the Bears? Hopefully Chris can play a couple of seasons at last for us? Anyway, good luck to him.
Note: I can't see any mention on the Official Website? I'd have thought it would be there?
Will be good if we could see him for a couple of years, he missed so many games for us over the years because he would get called up by England then omitted from the team and left to stand around not getting a game for weeks. We now have enough bowlers to be able to rotate them seeing as they appear to think they play too much. Woakes, Bamber, Booth, OHD, Thompson, Gilchrist, Barnard should give us plenty of options. Bring on 2026.
A great tribute to Chris Woakes from George Dobell in The Cricketer, which has the sub-heading: "Any team would be lucky to have him; he has been a credit to his family, his county and his country – and, really, what more can any of us achieve?"
It’s been great to see so many glowing tributes; Chris is clearly universally recognised as not only a fabulous cricketer but also an absolutely top bloke. Quite right too, he deserves all the recognition and accolades that have been made.
I’m encouraged by his apparent eagerness to continue playing county cricket, although he does also allude to pursuing franchise opportunities, so time will tell.
Article about Chris Woakes that makes the point expressed by several of us on here - he deserved better than the dismissive send-off that Rob Key gave him:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecricketdrop/p/bonus-the-cricket-drop-farewell-the?r=3becy7&utm_medium=ios
Yes, I do think that for much of his time in the job, Rob Key has come across as a bit of a knobhead who used to come out with lots of crap whilst he was Kent captain. He once decided to bat first in September in a 50-over final and then blamed his batsmen when they didn't make enough runs after the ball moved around in its usual manor at that time of the year. He has been accused before of coming out with crap instead of thinking about what he should be saying before the mouth opens. He epitomises the McCullum/Stokes/Key way of doing things which is to not learn from any mistakes, say whatever you like and ignore any criticism as you are too arrogant to think that someone else might be right. His comments were almost dismissive and Woakes should not have been playing in that last Test being the oldest Bowler and having played the first 4 but younger players were rested which makes me wonder if they were considering not taking him to Australia anyway. There is an arrogance about those 3 and it will be interesting to see what is made of it in The Cricketer magazine when it is out.